Dynamic Characters In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Mary Anne adjusted to the life in Vietnam, as did the soldiers that were there, and as time progressed she began to enjoy or get a thrill out of being in Vietnam. "I mean when we first got here-all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne,"(97). The learning curve in war is quickened by the fact that it is a matter of life or death when you are working in a war, and it did not matter who you were the you quickly learned how to operate in a battle field. Mary Anne did not fit in a first and did not know or understand her role in the war, and just like the fresh soldiers coming from America did know or understand their role in the war. As the soldiers, as well as Mary Anne, begin to realize the realities of the war they move their focus away from their homes in America and begin to focus on the work that needed to be accomplished in Vietnam. The physical changes that occur to Mary Anne as she begins to be assimilated into the Vietnam War are like night and day. She came as your typical American girl, but then becomes a fighting soldier looking and anticipating ugly war

You can't feel like that anywhere else’”(O’Brien 111). Mary Anne is inevitably drawn to the other side—the other side in this case being the Vietnam War itself. She is not completely part of it yet but she sure is fascinated by it, and will be part of it soon. She displays the danger of throwing away all separation between herself and the war. She is at the point where she wants to become one with the war. However towards the end of the story, Mary Ann becomes a completely different person. This can be shown perfectly in the quote, “She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill”(O’Brien 116).

From the moment Mary Anne arrives at the base, the other soldiers know that this was a mistake. But Mark Fossie, blinded by love, doesn’t realize this. He believes that Mary Anne’s innocence could be preserved. But oh how he was wrong. In perhaps the greatest mistake in the entire Vietnam war, a soldier brought his girlfriend to Vietnam. Quickly her innocence disappears, and she turns into something wicked. She wears a necklace of human tongues and begins to take risks not even Ethan Hunt would. She behaves dangerously; she refuses to carry a weapon. This wickedness fundamentally changes Mary Anne’s personality and her attitude toward life. While she feels that she is finding herself, she is instead losing herself. May Anne loses herself to the jungle and the war. Like a hyperbole of the entire Vietnam era, Mary Anne loses her purpose. Around this time, some might say so did the American Dream. Contributing to the entropy of the American Dream, soldiers felt lost, confused, and in a metaphorical fog. Soldiers stopped thinking of the war as just good and bad, and instead as one of lesser

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

Also she learned how to “disassemble an M-16” spending lots of time “plunking away C-ration cans with an M-16” this new skill would become a factor for life or death for her (O’Brien 93). With the many weeks she stayed the men would notice that her body “ seemed foreign some how -to stiff in places , too firm where softness used to be.” this was also displayed with her eyes that were “utterly flat and no indifferent… no emotion in her stare.” (O’Brien 105). This change show how Vietnam changed her entire identity as well as the soldiers who fought the Viet

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is an interesting story that takes place during the Vietnam War. O’Brien writes in third person omniscient and is only in the head of the main character; First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. In the story O’Brien describes not only the physical baggage each soldier carries, but hints at the emotional baggage as well. With this, readers get to see exactly what goes on in the soldier’s minds, but also Cross’s mind and what kind of character he is. Throughout the story Cross confesses profusely about loving Martha, who in return doesn’t see him as a lover but a friend. Martha is Cross’s friend and crush who constantly writes to him. Because Cross is so infatuated with Martha, she clouds his mind almost 24/7. In the beginning of the story all Cross could think of is Martha, however because of this he

Mary Anne was in Vietnam during the war which “had the effect of a powerful drug [..] she wanted more, she

This book is an actual war story where it has numerous of stories about his experiences. But under all those harsh stories and events lies one of the most powerful forces, and that is love. Could it be that instead these stories are based on love and not war? When I say love I do not mean that they are all homosexual but rather they are best friends, battle buddies, loyal to each other. They may get into fights but they all have each others back at the end of the day and I’m going to go through three characters and how they connected with the author, Tim O’Brien.

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

Mary Anne's curiosity provoked her change. You see this from the way she is described. If it wasn't for her avid nature to learn more about her surroundings she may have stayed the same. She wanted to know everything about Vietnam, she didn't just want to sit back and watch. She wanted to be in the action. "Though she was young, Rat said Mary Anne Bell was no timid child. She was curious about things…asking questions…. listen quietly while someone would fill her in. She had a good quick mind."(95) She was enthralled by her surroundings she wanted to do and know everything, she was in a new place ready and willing to learn unlike the soldiers who were there only because they had too. The speaker shows us this in this quote. "They carried the soldiers greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing…it was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive…they kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative to fall."(21) This quote is to inform the reader that the only reason a solider would go to war and to stay there is from the "fear of blushing" That they weren't there by choice. The term "humping" is used. It is there way of dealing with the war. They just have to keep on ‘humping" and everything would be all right. It was there way

Vietnam made a big portion of history also through its use of slang and war specified language.  This language came about through many means including its adaption to the Vietnamese language, coded words, phrases, profanity and initials that represent war objects, and other means, and to represent or even hide their emotional stand points.  On page 19, O'Brien describes the young soldiers as actors.  They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.  On page 12, Lieutenant describes his feelings for Martha as dense, crushing love.  He then explains how he wants to sleep inside her lungs, breathe her blood, amd be smothered.  This sounds like extremely harsh description for love.  However, the soldier's environment became the most they could relate to.  For example, to describe the death of a soldier, they'd used phrases such as "Boom. Down. Like Cement," or "flat fuck fell."  O'Brien explains how the soldiers would make conscious efforts to joke about things and make comical references to have themselves laugh.  Page 19 describes that they used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness.  At the end of page 18 and beginning of page 19, we find that the men would now and then panic and have the desire to cry out for the misery to stop.  They'd make unguaranteed promises to God and their parents in hope that that would be their source of survival.  On page 11 O'Brien tells that the Imagination was a

Many of the wives talked about the letter their husband/boyfriend sent home, and their inability to talk about anything other than the "weather". One particular wife stood out though for her husband's story. She said he husband left her a simple note that read “I love you sweetheart, but I can't take the flashbacks", before he went in to the garage and killed himself. In this case, it is obvious that whatever the soldier witnessed in Vietnam greatly affected him. He was unable to take seeing the atrocities that he witnessed in Vietnam anymore, he was willing to go to the extreme of taking his own life- dismantling not only his own life, but also his whole families- just to avoid seeing the visions anymore. This would lead many to assume that events the soldiers saw were horrific, and continued to affect them even after they had already returned home. One soldiers wife said "he lost his soul in Vietnam but it took 7 years for his body to catch up", soldiers were dehumanized by the things they had to in Vietnam and this cause them to "die" even though their hearts were still technically beating.

One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way

In Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Tim O'Brien gives a dynamic example of how even the deep roots of ones culture can be modified. The focus is on the young lady, whose boyfriend manages to have her shipped over to Vietnam from the U.S. She is then thrown into a completely foreign culture that thousands of American GI's were experiencing. This change in culture affected the strongest and most skilled of America's ground troops. The affects on a civilian are almost unfathomable.

Tim O’Brien’s main focus throughout the story was to show how the characters were in a struggle to fight for their lives and sanity as the exposure to all that was happening during the Vietnam War. O’Brien focuses on the things the soldiers carried as he anaphorically repeats it several times throughout the story but not only on the physical perspective but the strong inner thoughts, emotions and feeling the soldiers went through during this horrific point in time. Tim O’Brien’s main protagonist in The Things They Carried was Lieutenant Cross and his obsession with Martha. Thinking of her distracted him from his call of duty during the vietnam war as O’Brien states “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin (2). This showed how all he cared about was Martha and that would distract him from his pertained duties which would make him weaker along with the people around him. All the characters are fictional, but help the reader become increasingly engaged in the story and better interpret the feeling of the different soldiers there were around O’Brien during the vietnam